The Mets are giving away tickets to their remaining games

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Believe it or not, the Mets are still participating in the 2010 baseball season.

They added another pitcher to the close but no cigar no-hitter file on Tuesday night when Dillon Gee took a no-no into the sixth inning. He gave up a homer but got the win in his first major league start so, naturally, the Mets aren't sure that he'll get another shot on the mound. They also visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital and, naturally, the Mets found a way to foul that up as well when Carlos Beltran, Luis Castillo and Oliver Perezfailed to show up.

A smart team would simply say that these brave warriors have sacrificed enough for this nation that they shouldn't be subjected to a conversation with the likes of Oliver Perez but this will probably get worse before it gets swept away into the dustbin with the rest of this season. Then again, if it was a smart team Perez wouldn't actually still be around and too much of this kind of reasoning will lead us into an intellectual cul-de-sac from which we'll never escape.

But there is some good news for those of you who still haven't had your fill of tasty Mets baseball this season. According to MetsBlog, the team is phoning fans who purchased any kind of ticket plan this season and offering them free, field level tickets to the remaining home dates on the schedule. That's probably not the way they drew things up when they were plotting out the plans for the new stadium.

It's a nice gesture, even if cynics will point out that the Mets will make some money off of concessions and this is all just the start of marketing for 2011 ticket sales. It's unlikely that they'll come up with too many better ideas on the latter front.

The Mets can't sell a bounceback season, not for the second year in a row, and, unless all signals have been wrong, they aren't going to be able to sell anyone on a game-changing acquisition that will fundamentally correct the flaws that bedevil this organization. Things have been breaking down for so long now that there really isn't any choice left but to give everything away in hopes that you defuse some of the anger that's bubbling across the fan base.

Good luck with that but it's probably time for something a bit more substantive out in Queens.